Tony Blair's participation trophy

It probably says, "Heckuva job" on it.

In the end, the British government “failed to achieve its stated objectives,” the inquiry concluded, and said that “Mr. Blair overestimated his ability to influence U.S. decisions on Iraq.”

Mr. Blair was said to have been advised by his diplomats and ministers of “the inadequacy of U.S. plans” and their concern “about the inability to exert significant influence on U.S. planning.” But he chose to override their objections.

The inquiry concluded, bluntly: “Mr. Blair eventually succeeded only in the narrow goal of securing President Bush’s agreement that there should be U.N. authorization of the post-conflict role.”

Influence, it said, “should not be set as an objective in itself.”

“The exercise of influence is a means to an end,” it said.

But, of course, influence is "an objective in itself." Piling up as much influence.. and of course money.. as possible is the whole name of this game. And the way to win at that is by never challenging power or convention regardless of the moral consequences which, ideally, never come up at all. 

Quote game

Which political commentator or candidate said this?

"We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems — our airports and all the other problems we have — we would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.

We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East — we've done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away — and for what? It's not like we had victory. It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!"

I'll give you a minute if you need it. 

Update:  It's Trump. Tim wins a.. some sort of something or other. 

The Nungesser Administration seems to be going well

It might be a good idea to get someone from IT to make sure Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser's spam filter is working. We can't keep falling for phishing schemes.

With the state facing an estimated $750 million shortfall in next year’s budget, Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser rolled up his sleeves to work on finding a solution of his own.

The result: an ambitious, potentially transformative arrangement that on paper proposes reviving Louisiana’s once dominant shipbuilding industry, creating more than 30,000 new jobs and investing nearly $1 billion into charitable endeavors involving education, health care and housing initiatives.

Too good to be true? That’s Gov. John Bel Edwards’ take.

Despite initiating a global correspondence and telling his letter’s recipients — who included U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iraqi prime minister — that he was working at Edwards’ behest, Nungesser actually kept the newly elected Democratic governor in the dark, both men say.

Why keep the Governor in the dark on such a massive deal? Well, it looks like Nungesser (and State GOP Chairman Roger Villere) got roped into an elaborate scheme put on by a guy named Markos Fuson. I don't want to spoil the article for you entirely. But the synopsis goes like this. Fuson's company is a Delawre based corporation called Alexandros. It is described in the article as "a 'healing' company with a background in medical technology"  is supposed to have brokered a deal with the Iraqi government to import oil to Louisiana using ships built at the now shuttered Avondale shipyard to be refined in Lake Charles at a facility not currently configured to do this sort of refining.

Seems legit, right?  Ok, well, what if I also threw in this nugget. 

According to Alexandros’ proposal, Fuson had committed to investing 100 percent of his profits from the joint venture into Louisiana’s motion picture industry. He then pledged to invest his share of the film profits into a “to-be-established” charitable foundation that would offer education, health care and housing assistance to “minorities in Louisiana.”

What could go wrong?

Anyway here we are just a few months into Billy Nungesser's stint at Lieutenant Governor and already things are getting weird. We suspect there's plenty more where that came from. Get used to reading this phrase.

Nungesser also blamed his staff, whom he relies upon to vet his documents. In this case, the letters never should have reached his desk, he said.

Basically, they just thought the best idea was to blow stuff up

Here is Josh Marshall digging past the simplistic explanations (Because Isreal and/or Because oil) about why the Bush Administration lied its way into a bloody disaster in Iraq and trying to parse out what, actually, could have been their thinking. In essence, he concludes, they just wanted to blow stuff up.

I wrote about just this question about a month before the invasion was actually launched. This was after reporting on the story, and shifting my own ideas back and forth a couple times, over a period of about eighteen months. There were so many different rationales, each distinct, often contradictory, one interchanging with another as the news cycle changed, that it eventually seemed clear to me that none of these were really reasons. They were rationales - arguments you devise (convincing or not) to make the case for something you want to do, rather than the actual motivating force behind your desire. So why did they want to do it? At some level I think it had simply become an idee fixe for many of these people. Because for many of them, when I would have frank conversations with them, they had a difficult time getting past the rationales, even in what I think were off-the-record and unguarded conversations. The real underlying reason, to the extent there was one, was the notion of creating a transformative event, a democratizing wave in the region that would get away from managing and on to 'solving' deep and lingering obstacles to American power.

And, frankly, that is the worst of all possible reasons. The US was already involved in Middle East politics because of its strategic and economic interest in oil and, to an extent, because of its relationship with Israel. The US is still heavily involved there for those reasons and this will continue to be the case until long after all of us are dead and gone.

But the war happened because some old hands at running the show over there were bored with playing the game. They wanted a transformative event to reset the pieces.  Maybe they'd get lucky and the resulting chaos really would "solve" some problems they'd grown weary of "managing." There wasn't any way to know how that would go but that wasn't really the point.

The calculation was this. We've been futzing around here forever. We're bored. Let's do something different. The terrible cost  in blood and treasure of doing something different didn't really matter to those deciders. They ended up getting richer anyway.

Nothing learned

Depressing

The only reason we're doing this at all is obviously because of the ISIS beheading videos. Roughly 200,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, including many American journalists. But the beheading videos of two Americans, coupled with shameless fearmongering on the part of the mainstream media, seriously influenced public opinion.

What seems equally clear, however, is that when this new war goes south, public opinion will sour quickly. Our history of intervening in civil wars is abysmal. We lost in Vietnam, we lost in Iraq, and Afghanistan is still on a losing trajectory. There is every reason to believe Syria will go at least as poorly as all those failures, if not worse.

Most Americans basically understand this, I think, despite the genuine horror of the beheading videos. Now, polls show bipartisan approval for airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria, but there are reasons to doubt that will last. Support for putting American troops into combat is still fairly low and approval for this war is actually below average when taken in the context of past conflicts.

Six years ago, the most important strength upon which Obama was elected was the feeling that it was time to start doing things differently from the way the Bush people had done them.  There are many ways in which the Obama Administration will be remembered for its missed opportunities.  Failure to change course in Iraq is only the most deadly, and costly of those.

Business is good

The business is blowing up people and stuff.

Stock prices for Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman set all-time record highs last week as it became increasingly clear that President Obama was committed to a massive, sustained air war in Iraq and Syria.

There's also the business of "training moderate rebels" whatever a moderate rebel might be.  We do know the moderate rebels will be trained and armed in one of the world's most repressive and extremist countries. 

U.S. officials said a critical component of the plan to train and equip the Syrian insurgents, who have received only modest American backing so far and have failed to coalesce into a potent fighting force, was the Saudis' willingness to allow use of their territory for the U.S. training effort.

"Now what we have is a commitment from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia ... to be a full partner with us in that effort, including by hosting that training program," a senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call.

The Saudi decision came to light after Obama spoke by phone earlier in the day with Saudi King Abdullah.

It's important to keep in mind that we're training and arming these people, in part, because we like to be able to say we're not putting very many "boots on the ground."  This is good for morale because we aren't putting as many of our soldiers in harm's way.

But it's also good for business because of who we send instead of soldiers.

Analysts say hiring contractors is a way to avoid deploying such forces.

David Johnson, a former Army lieutenant colonel who is executive director of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, said contractors aren’t considered “boots on the ground” in conflict zones.

“The government always seeks to minimize boots on the ground to reduce domestic political risk,” he said in an email. “The American people and media do not consider a paid contractor to represent them in the same way that they do a soldier.”

Using contractors, who, most studies show, are cheaper than soldiers, trims the official presence and still accomplishes the logistical and security objectives, he said.

Defense contractors have plenty of experience in Iraq. During the U.S. occupation, thousands of armed security contractors and support personnel worked alongside foreign and Iraqi troops to help stabilize the country.

Experience.

That is good for business even if it means your business does only one thing.

Destroying what Obama calls the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant won’t create an effective and legitimate Iraqi state. It won’t restore the possibility of a democratic Egypt. It won’t dissuade Saudi Arabia from funding jihadists. It won’t pull Libya back from the brink of anarchy. It won’t end the Syrian civil war.  It won’t bring peace and harmony to Somalia and Yemen. It won’t persuade the Taliban to lay down their arms in Afghanistan. It won’t end the perpetual crisis of Pakistan. It certainly won’t resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

All the military power in the world won’t solve those problems. Obama knows that. Yet he is allowing himself to be drawn back into the very war that he once correctly denounced as stupid and unnecessary — mostly because he and his advisers don’t know what else to do. Bombing has become his administration’s default option.

Because it isn't necessary to "solve those problems" so much as it is to just make sure you get to stay in business.

Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy—and not just because so many of their leaders came from the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in the prisons we set up (Camp Bucca seems to have been the West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing US counterterror operations in the "surge" years of the occupation. In fact, just about everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise. After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first signs of ISIS's fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington's weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.

When you think about it, from the moment the first bombs began falling on Afghanistan in October 2001 to the present, not a single US military intervention has had anything like its intended effect. Each one has, in time, proven a disaster in its own special way, providing breeding grounds for extremism and producing yet another set of recruitment posters for yet another set of jihadist movements. Looked at in a clear-eyed way, this is what any American military intervention seems to offer such extremist outfits—and ISIS knows it.

Probably, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Blackwater and Northrop Grumman know it as well.  They've been in this business a long time. And it's still quite good to them.  

It's all very rational and serious

The rush to bomb the shit out of whatever

The news media may already be in the process of exaggerating the public’s desire for military action, which could accelerate the cycle in which politicians perceive a public desire and rush out to meet it, thereby feeding the perception that more aggressive action is both necessary and inevitable. As you watch all the coverage, keep in mind that the media loves war. It’s too simplistic to say this is just because it attracts readers and ratings. War is everything the news thirsts after: it’s big, it’s important, it’s historic, it’s dramatic, it’s full of conflict and excitement and uncertainty.

Therefore Obama will say comforting things to us tonight.  That way we'll all feel really good about ourselves when we bomb the shit out of whatever anyway. Unless he wears an ugly suit. Then we'll all be really mad.  We'll still drop some bombs, though. 

Frontier justice

Watch your step, narc.

According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, State Department investigator had already begun probing Blackwater a short time before the infamous Nisour Square shooting in 2007. But the probe broke down when Blackwater's top guy in Iraq threatened to kill the lead investigator, suggesting, not improbably, that amid the anarchy of Iraq it could be easily covered up as just another moment of sectarian violence or a terrorist attack.

In practical terms, police more often than not make the law. And this is not only the case in "fog of war" situations like Iraq 2007.  In New Orleans we call murder and body disposal a Number 2.  (In case you're wondering the Number 1 is a Ham Sandwich.)  

The scary thing in the Blackwater case is we're talking about a private police force with no straightforward accountability to any state.  Thank god we don't have that sort of thing here.

A century of total war

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated 100 years ago today.  It's the event that the popular imagination holds sparked an unavoidable series of events leading to the First World War and the succeeding century of bloodshed.

We're still letting blood today as a consequence.

At war’s end, (T.E.) Lawrence’s vision of Arab independence was shattered when the Versailles peace conference confirmed the carving of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine into British and French spheres of influence; arbitrary boundaries drawn in the sand to satisfy the appetites of empire – Britain’s Foreign Office even called the former Ottoman lands “The Great Loot.”

The hopeful Lawrence drew his own “peace map” of the region, one that paid closer heed to tribal allegiances and rivalries. The map could have saved the world a lot of time, trouble and treasure, one historian said, providing the region “with a far better starting point than the crude imperial carve up.” Lawrence wrote to a British major in Cairo: “I’m afraid you will be delayed a long time, cleaning up all the messes and oddments we have left behind us.”

100 years later we're still trying to maintain the arbitrary boundaries of the "Great Loot." We've gotten really good at lying about it, though.

But this week, Meet the Press is evidently doing something different. They're putting the Iraq question to former President Bill Clinton. There's an excerpt up at the Meet the Press website, which they're headlining this way:

Clinton on Cheney: 'If They Hadn't Gone to War in Iraq None of This Would Be Happening'

It's a good line. But history will recall Bill Clinton as someone who supported the Bush administration's drive to war in 2003–even though Clinton has at times tried to claim otherwise. As FAIR noted in 2007 (Action Alert, 11/29/07), Clinton said he'd been against the war "from the beginning." But he had a funny way of showing it–writing a column for the Guardian (3/18/03) the day before the invasion headlined "Trust Tony's Judgment" (as in former British Prime Minister Tony Blair), explaining on 60 Minutes (3/30/03) that "I support our troops in Iraq and the president," and telling Time magazine (6/28/04) that he had "repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq."

Publishers, anticipating the Great War centennial have put out a raft of new books over past few years.  Here are two recommendations.

Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy by David Stevenson -- Lot of stuff about the stupidity of generals slow to realize that charging men and horses toward machine guns is kind of a bad idea. But really this is a book about the stupid political leaders and the fact that this was very much a war of choice.

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild -- Tells the stories of anti-war resisters in Great Britain.

What did we learn?

After a decade in Iraq, it seems the thing we've learned is that the real victims of the war are its neocon promoters and their water carriers in the media.

Fox News contributor Judith Miller, whose reporting on Iraq's weapons of mass turned out to be stunningly wrong, said Friday that the media has been too hard on other individuals whose pre-war pronouncements also turned out to be stunningly wrong.

During an appearance on Fox, Miller complained that the media "loves to beat up on who was responsible for the Iraq War and who is to blame for the current controversy, the current crisis."

Oh and we've also learned, through science, that maybe Judith Miller and Dick Cheney are worse people than rats are.

Happy Iraq Day

Walter Isaacson is a big jerk.

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, “We didn’t question our sources enough.” But why? Isaacson notes there was “almost a patriotism police” after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’”

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan” and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, “Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails.”

And the lesson  is, a responsible media executive who receives marching orders from his corporate sponsors should always go along to get along. There will be plenty of time to say "oops" later. The important thing is that everyone continues to see you as a responsible person.

Also tough; it's important that people see you as tough.

And all tomorrow's missions too

Today is "Mission Accomplished Day" (10 freaking years later!)

Never forget the heroes.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.”

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: “As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.” His guest, Joe Klein, responded: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me.”

Gee aren't those three individuals embarrassed.  Guess they'll always regret the day they threw away their credibility glorifying the bloodiest obvious hypocrisy of the decade. 

Aw I'm just joshing with you, of course.  Those people are still fabulously wealthy, successful, and respected voices in political journalism. In their business you can never go broke sucking up to money and power

This is also why we're all very excited for The Advocate's future. What could possibly go wrong?

Eventually what you learn is you don't count

Happy Iraq War Day.  May all your missions be fully accomplished.

There have been several pointed comparisons today between the relative impotence of the hundreds of thousands strong anti-war protests in major American and Western European cities that preceded the invasion compared to the effectiveness of the smaller, but more focused, funded, and better treated by the news media "Tea Party" reaction to President Obama in 2010.

Here, Digby reminds us of Clear Channel's astroturf pro-war rallies that were falsely cited in the media as a "balancing counterpoint" to the massive protests. Despite the difference in numbers, the Iraq protests had zero effect on the decision to go ahead and spend trillions of dollars killing hundreds of thousands of people.

The Tea Partiers, by contrast,  took control of congress and, more crucially, enough state legislatures and governorships just in time for redistricting and so continue to dominate the national agenda. Or at least their concerns do.

The lesson, as always is, yell and scream all you want. Nobody who matters is ever listening.

Morning digital edition

Before you do anything else this morning, please read:

Courreges: “Cleaning up” your Constitutional rights in Jackson Square

 I recently said that Mayor Landrieu had declared war on live music, but that was a pitiful understatement.  It’s far worse than I thought.  Mayor Landrieu has declared war on New Orleans itself, and if doesn’t stop it soon, we’ll all be collateral damage.

Wang:  Dead Fly The Birds

(The Falcons are) the kind of dudes who eat the cheese and start talking 16-0 halfway through. The kind who talk a bunch of shit on Twitter leading up to the games. The kind who fuck around in their locker room the day before a game taping ridiculous freestyle raps to post on their team web site. (At least they weren't rappin kids though, am I right #Rodney?) The kind who run around yapping and disturbing their opponents' pregame warmups in a pathetically lame attempt to play mindgames, or whatever it is they think they're doing.
Then they get punched in the mouth, shit their pants, come up small in a big moment (as usual) and before they even hit the showers, it all starts crumbling. They get all butt hurt and start pointing fingers. They start whining about how their fans are gonna be jumping off the bandwagon any minute now. (In his defense, DeCoud is probably right.)

Taibbi: Rewrite Thomas Friedman's Syria Column, Win a Free Hand Grenade 

Read Taibbi's set up. It's great.  But it ends with this contest announcement.

I'll be donating a replica hand grenade paperweight for the person who, in the comments section below, does the best one-paragraph summary of the metaphor-fest in today's Friedman piece. And please, if you do a submission, don't forget to check back to see if you won, so you can send me contact information.

And then the fun starts in the comments.

US plans pretend withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2013

Based on the pretend withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

Mr. Panetta offered no details of what stepping back from combat would mean, saying only that the troops would move into an “advise-and-assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where American forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success at best.

The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. American troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.

More on how the pretend Iraq withdrawal worked.

Back in 5 days

Meanwhile try to make the most of the holiday. Try not to kick anybody in the face.



I'll leave you with these

Salon's Justin Elliot:
No, the U.S. is not leaving Iraq

Do you think we’re going to see spasms of violence between Americans and Iraqis post-Dec. 31?

I think it’s inevitable. Look at it from the perspective of an Iranian Quds Force operative. You know you want to frustrate the U.S. in Iraq; and you know that Iraqis are burning U.S. flags in celebration of the withdrawal. That’s a tremendous opportunity for Iran right there. Because if you also know that there are these armed contractors helping diplomats get from point A to point B, you win if you provoke them into violence. And it’s really easy to place an IED on a road or to open fire on a convoy. Then if there are Americans in Iraq opening fire on Iraqis — after the Iraqi leaders have said Americans are gone — that’s a major propaganda win for Iran. This is a really foreseeable disaster.

Another thing worth pointing out is that Leon Panetta has been saying recently that there are 1,000 Iraqis who are al-Qaida loyalists. If that’s true, Iraq is by far host to the largest al-Qaida presence in the world. It’s really hard to believe the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command won’t find a way to go after those people. And remember, as Mary Wheeler has pointed out, Congress has not rescinded the authorization for military force in Iraq.

US military 'ready to engage in a conflict with Iran'

Leon Panetta, the secretary of defence, said this week that the US was prepared to step in to prevent Tehran realising its nuclear ambitions. He estimated that the country was only a year away from reaching its goal.

"The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "That is a red line for us and that is a red line for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will do it. If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding in developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop them. There are no options that are off the table."

One step away from Baghdad Bike Lanes

Iraq: France's Alstom signs high-speed rail line deal The baby of the empire always gets the nice toys.

Update: Tangent About those bike lanes.

Now, City Councilman Eric Ulrich, R-Ozone Park, has had enough, saying the agency has forgotten its core mission — fixing the roads.

“Why can’t we just we get back to basics and worry more about paving the roads and the streets than we are about installing bike lanes and putting in pedestrian plazas where communities don’t want them?” Ulrich told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

“The roads in Baghdad look better than the roads in Queens. I think I have a right to be upset.”

The harsh words came at a City Council hearing on the pedestrian plazas installed by the DOT. Ulrich wasn’t alone as several others talked about a belief there is an anti-driver bias.

I'm not so sure what's going on in New York City and elsewhere is best described as an "anti-driver bias" though. I've made this point before but I tend to skew pro bicycle and anti-bike lane. Bike lanes not only make getting around less convenient and more dangerous for cyclists but they're more importantly a means of policing and ticketing a heretofore unharassed pool of vehicles, which seems to be the fashion these days.

While I like living where I can bike or walk to most day-to-day destinations, I'm not an evangelist about this lifestyle. I recognize that most adults either need or prefer to drive most of the time and that's okay. I also sympathize with their perception that their lives are being made more difficult. While urban cores in older cities may be re-engineered to become more bike or pedestrian friendly, this is far less true of the suburbs. I also happen to think we're living in a time when suburban living is becoming less and less desirable for those who can afford to move back to into the gentrifying cities. So, in addition to everything else, the bike lane is itself a gentrification tool as well.

Christmas Bombs

US warplanes bomb central Iraq

US fighter jets have reportedly pounded a region in Iraq's central governorate of Babil months after Washington declared an end to combat operations in Iraq late August.


Iraqi security sources said that on Monday, US warplanes shelled a region lying north of the provincial capital of Hilla, Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.

“A number of US jets pounded this afternoon al-Buhayrat region, al-Askandariya district," said a security official, noting that Iraqi authorities had not been informed about the operation.

It was only just September when President Obama declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq and already we're delivering post-Mission ordnance by the Holidays. Maybe they're dropping Christmas bombs.

Red Sleigh Down
Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

They were who we thought they were

Newly Declassified Documents Show Bush Administration Looked For Excuse To Start War In Iraq In Nov. 2001

Privatizing Iraq

Pulling out (sort of... I mean Brett Favre pulled out of football once or twice too) and sending in the contractors.

To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.

In a way, we're pretty lucky in New Orleans. Our post-disaster laboratory experiment has mostly focused on perfecting the practice of turning our children's education over to private management. In Iraq they're working on privately operated armies. Not that we didn't get a taste of that too for a while. But, just think, next time they send in a private army to pacify an American population, it'll really know what it's doing.

Meanwhile, the best summary of the Iraq (sort of) pullout comes from The Onion

Obama also noted that during the war more Iraqi insurgents died than American troops, which, he admitted, isn't necessarily the best way to determine a war's victor, but is nonetheless still preferable to the other way around.

"By the end of this month, victory, to a certain extent, will be ours, and we can finally welcome our troops back home," Obama concluded. "That is unless they are one of the 50,000 U.S. soldiers who will have to stay in the region for the foreseeable future."